Perusing large documents for content can be a tiring and stressful task. For instance, it is difficult for readers to maintain organized notes on lengthy passages, and it is particularly trying for readers to retain all of the necessary information within their memory. A reader may further need to organize his or her notes based on a particular category of content or set thereof and/or may instead be reading strictly for information pertaining to such categories. Even when a reader is successful in consuming the content of a document, reviewing the document and subsequently organizing a set of notes thereon requires a significant amount of time to accomplish. For instance, reading through a stack of legal court opinions or a movie production script and also tracking and organizing all of the relevant information from the document or documents is a trying endeavor that demands constant focus and a substantial amount of time to accomplish.
A traditional way to keep track of specific information in a document is to highlight a passage in color or to annotate passages of text or other content directly on the face of the document. Doing so directs the reader's attention back to the highlighted or annotated passages during a subsequent read-through, which makes it easy to quickly recall important facts. Additionally, today, highlighters are available in a plurality of colors, and when each such color is paired with its own category of information, it allows a reader to quickly reference specific (color-coded) categories of content. Readers may take this process a step further as well—by transposing the highlighted or annotated content from the original document onto a new document, and maintaining the transposed content in an organized, summarized manner on the new document. “Briefing” court opinions is a good example of this practice, which activity generally involves drafting a new document and organizing specific information therein into the categories to which it pertains, which new document may be used as a standalone reference or as a supplement to the original court opinion document.
However, while highlighting, or annotating, and transposing such content is generally a simple process with print documents, such as physical books and papers, it can be difficult and inefficient when attempted with electronic documents. That is, software applications generally do not provide an easy, convenient, and efficient way for users to highlight or annotate content on an electronic document, transpose that content to a new electronic document, and organize that content therein into categories or groupings based on the specific means by which the content was highlighted or annotated. Because our society is moving more towards electronic data and farther away from print, it is important that readers be able to easily and efficiently annotate content on a first electronic document, output the annotated content to a second electronic document, and organize the annotated content as desired within the second electronic document.
Solutions known in the art include the system and method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,721,921, wherein a user annotates a first electronic document and the system subsequently generates an exact copy of that document and the annotations made thereon. This technique creates a graphical overlay that can be disposed onto copies of the first electronic document, which overlays comprise the user's annotations exactly as they were made on the first document. However, this system and method does not actually output the annotated content from the original electronic document or allow the user to edit the first electronic document, and so the second electronic document created thereby does not help the user by including only the annotated content from the first electronic document or by organizing such content therein.
A second system and method for annotating the content of a first electronic document is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,987,416 and involves creating an output repository wherein records are maintained as to the identifying information of the first electronic document within which the annotations were made, which identifying information is predefined within a plurality of reusable operators. The operators search through the first electronic document for identifying information, which, when located, is annotated and outputted to the output repository. While this technique conveniently records and displays the annotations made to a first electronic document, it too fails to create an actual second electronic document that comprises the annotated content from the first electronic document or that organizes such content.
A third technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,603, which relies on a method for taking as input a first electronic document and a query of particularized content to be annotated, which method searches the first electronic document for such content, autonomously annotates it, and outputs the annotated content to a database or repository. This method overcomes the shortcomings of other techniques by outputting only the annotated content to the second electronic document, which second document is therefore a good resource for the user to review the annotated content itself. Still, this technique includes its own disadvantages, namely, that the process of annotating the first electronic document may be automated rather than done by the user, and, further, that the user is incapable of subsequently organizing the annotated content within the database or repository.
Consequently, there exists a need for a system and method that allows a user to annotate content on a first electronic document, output the annotated content to a second electronic document, and organize the annotated content as desired within the second electronic document into groupings defined by the content categories to which the annotated content pertains.